Bang!
A gunshot suddenly rang out deep in the dense forest before dawn. At the distant treetops of Leaf Crown, countless black feathers exploded into the air amid a cacophony of raucous bird cries that stirred the mountains and wilds. Gu Xianwang jolted awake and scrambled to her feet.
Sleep still clung to her heavily, her mind a foggy haze. How had she managed to nod off last night? She’d slept like the dead.
The motion tugged at her injuries, sending a sharp, tearing pain across her back. Gu Xianwang hissed through her teeth, only then registering the deep ache throughout her body. The strain on her back had fully reasserted itself after a night’s rest.
Sara roused almost as quickly, snapping into a state of high alert. Long Li leaped down from the locust tree branches, her expression as sharp and vigilant as it had been the day before, as if the sleepless night had left her utterly unaffected.
Sara scanned their surroundings. The sky was pitch black—the darkest hour just before dawn. “Long, what was that?”
Long Li’s brows furrowed slightly as she kept her voice low. “Sounds like the blast from that homemade shotgun Chak brought.”
Gu Xianwang shook Ye Chan awake and glanced at her watch. It read 4:18 a.m.—the dead of night when most people slept the deepest.
“Have those mountain folk snuck up on us?”
Her words had barely left her mouth when guttural roars erupted from the mountain walls all around them, like call-and-response shouts echoing across the peaks. There was no melody to it, just a rhythmic chanting that instantly called to mind the howls of wolves on the open plains.
Ye Chan stared in bewilderment. “What the hell are they doing? Calling for reinforcements?”
Long Li listened through one full cycle, her face growing darker. “No. It sounds more like they’re summoning something.”
Sara sprang to her feet and rolled her shoulders, loosening up. “Looks like they’re getting ready to encircle us.”
If that had been Chak’s gunshot, it meant they’d walked into an ambush. Iron sand bullets for his homemade shotgun were a pain to carry around—he couldn’t have packed many. For him to fire anyway meant the situation was desperate.
Senior Brother’s hands were bound; he had zero chance of defending himself. If the mountain folk caught up to them, he’d be the first one they’d ditch.
Gu Xianwang voiced her worry. “The primitive forest at the bottom of this sinkhole is massive. How did those mountain folk even track them down? This is their home turf. If they’re cut off and surrounded, they’re in real trouble.”
Sara pulled out her personal combat knife, a gleam of excitement in her eyes. “Ha, even that old fox Chak has his bad days. We should make for the altar right now—we can catch up on yesterday’s lost time.”
Ye Chan shot her a disbelieving look. What a heartwarming display of brotherly love: yesterday Chak had used his sister as bait, and now Sara was itching to use her brother as a stepping stone.
Disbelief aside, a sudden thought struck her—the walkie-talkie they’d scavenged from the karst cave yesterday.
“Hey, don’t you think we should at least turn on the walkie-talkie? Senior Brother Yao’s still with those two. If shit hits the fan, are you really gonna let them die?”
Sara slanted her a glance and snorted. “You can barely keep yourself alive, and you’re fretting over them? Know what kind of characters bite it in the first three episodes of a TV drama? Helpless, nosy white lotuses like you who keep hopping around.”
Ye Chan bristled. “Fuck off—then what are you? Some two-bit villain goon? You’re rotten clear through—boils on your back, pus oozing from your belly button.”
“You—”
“Quiet.” Long Li cut her off sharply. She took the walkie-talkie from Ye Chan, climbed to higher ground, and thumbed the power button.
The familiar crackle of static hissed out, likely scrambled by the sinkhole’s weird magnetic interference. Long Li pressed the talk button. “Old Dog, Chak—talk to me.”
Zzzzt.
Nothing.
Sara arched a brow. “Old Fox is too busy scrambling for his life to bother with the radio.”
Long Li paused, then keyed it again. “Old Dog, report your status.”
Gu Xianwang watched her persist, suddenly recalling Long Li’s rundown on Old Dog from the night before. She clearly knew the man well. If he was the grizzled battlefield vet she described, he wouldn’t drop comms with his team under any circumstances.
This time, the static was a mess, laced with sharp bursts of feedback.
A moment later, the walkie-talkie went dead silent.
Long Li slowly lowered it, her gaze fixed on the direction of the gunshot. The eerie shouts still circled them, a chill killing intent bleeding out from the thin mist rising in the early morning air.
Gu Xianwang stepped up beside her. “Or we could try closing in on that direction first.”
Abruptly, static crackled from the walkie-talkie once more.
Long Li pressed the receiver to her ear.
Static crackled over the radio. “Captain Long… I… Old Dog, we’re… heading east, under… attack. Request…”
Old Dog’s response came in fits and starts amid a cacophony of loud, chaotic background noise. He sounded like he was panting hard.
The most crucial details barely made it through.
Gu Xianwang could only make out fragments, so she leaned closer to the receiver. Another burst of electromagnetic static followed, and then Old Dog seemed to repeat himself.
“Be careful… birds. Don’t send support. I repeat, don’t—”
His words cut off abruptly. Then Chak’s furious voice burst through: “Damn it! What do you mean no support? We… you guys too… can’t get away. If you want to live… get over here!”
With that, the radio went dead silent, as if they’d switched it off on their end.
Gu Xianwang frowned deeply. Even from those last few garbled phrases, Chak’s meaning was crystal clear.
If something happened to them, the women wouldn’t escape either. Their only shot at survival was to rush over and mount a rescue.
Sara, standing right across from Long Li, had caught the gist of it. She spat on the ground. “The hell? If they want to die, fine, but dragging us down with them? That guy’s not usually this panicked, though. Sounds like they’re in real trouble.”
“Birds,” Gu Xianwang prompted. “They just mentioned birds.”
Sara scoffed. “Pfft, what, the birds in this sinkhole turned into spirits or something? Enough to beat two grown men black and blue?”
Gu Xianwang pondered for a moment before suddenly recalling the myna bird at Old Stick’s place. “Not impossible. Didn’t Long Li say the ecology here is abnormal? After resting here last night, I felt more energized than usual. I suspect the oxygen levels might be higher than outside.”
Sara had zero interest in that kind of theory and dismissed the idea outright.
But Long Li knew better. If the oxygen content really was richer than normal, combined with the sinkhole’s enclosed topography, it could foster a unique ecosystem in this pocket of rainforest.
After all, back in the Jurassic era when giant creatures roamed, Earth’s oxygen levels had been far higher than today.
Long Li clipped the radio to the side of her pack. “Those mountain folk might be summoning some kind of creature. Birds have a wide activity radius—it’s not out of the question. If they’ve really trained up some hunting falcons, our position’s exposed; it’s only a matter of time.”
They had to move. The mountain folk knew their target was the altar too. Better to take the fight to them on the way than get ambushed again. Their best bet was linking up with Chak.
“Judging from the gunshots and Old Dog’s report, they’re circling southeast right now.”
“Let’s go.”
In that moment, Long Li embodied a true commander—her words brooked no argument, her assessment cool-headed, her confidence absolute.
Sara raised a hand. “You got it.”
Long Li passed out energy bars to the group. “Refuel quick. We move out now.”
Gu Xianwang was still deeply worried. The situation had tightened up in an instant, with unknown dangers lurking ahead. Ye Chan was the only one among them without any combat experience at all. Once they plunged into an encirclement, she was liable to fall behind.
Ye Chan was chomping through her energy bar like a hamster. Spotting Gu Xianwang’s gaze, she gulped down a swig of water, swallowed, then sidled up with a cheeky grin. She bumped Gu Xianwang’s shoulder lightly and whispered in her ear, “Don’t worry. We’re off to save Senior Brother Yao.”
Gu Xianwang pressed her lips together, about to caution her, when a rustling came from the bushes nearby. She snapped her head up to see a black-feathered bird flapping into the air with a piercing chirp that echoed rapidly outward.
Long Li’s eyes turned icy. “Run! Follow my tracks.”
With that, she shot forward like a loosed arrow, plunging into the underbrush.
~~~
Once they entered the forest depths, the distant roars faded into a hazy backdrop. As the temperature climbed, dew evaporated into the air, and the white mist grew thicker by the second. Gu Xianwang stuck tight to Long Li’s back ahead of her while constantly checking that Ye Chan was keeping up behind. Her attention split both ways, she couldn’t muster her Eye Technique.
The mist hung like a veil—nothing visible beyond three meters. Long Li seemed aware of it too, planting each step heavily to leave deep tracks in the mossy ground.
The bird calls around them grew ever denser, though it was impossible to tell if the flock was just stirring to life or actively closing in to surround them.
Gu Xianwang drew her dagger while running and passed it backward to Ye Chan, murmuring, “No matter what happens, stick close to Long Li.”
As they spoke, a sharp crack like a whip snapping rang out from ahead—thwack!—the sound so powerful it seemed to shake the very air. Gu Xianwang’s steps faltered, and then Long Li shouted, “Get down!”
Ye Chan froze for an instant before someone shoved her head to the ground. In the next moment, the crisp rat-a-tat of crossbow mechanisms echoed backward.
Gu Xianwang’s scalp prickled as countless arrows sliced through the air above her like a curtain of rain, their dense shafts whistling with deadly speed.
The barrage lasted nearly half a minute, leaving the tree trunks on either side of them bristling with arrow shafts. These were no ordinary arrows like the ones A Yan had carried; they were iron ones, meticulously maintained and even gleaming with oil.
The air fell silent. Gu Xianwang rose and took a look. The force driving those iron arrows was far beyond human strength—it had to be several iron crossbows hidden nearby.
Was this modern craftsmanship?
Ye Chan patted her chest in lingering fear and ran her fingers over the narrow fletching on an arrow tail. “There’s some kind of brand on this,” she said, puzzled.
“Quit dawdling, you two! You trying to get yourselves killed?” Sara called impatiently from up ahead.
Gu Xianwang hurried to catch up, twisting her head to ask Ye Chan, “What kind of brand?”
Still catching her breath, Ye Chan thought for a moment. “It felt like… that Sun Bird mark.”
“Watch your step.” Gu Xianwang frowned in warning as she stepped over the taut hemp rope they’d just triggered. She glanced both ways along its length; it stretched far beyond her line of sight, making it impossible to pinpoint where the crossbows were positioned.
But a brand on the arrows suggested this trap might be of ancient make after all. Considering when crossbows were invented, such large-scale iron production seemed improbable.
Unless the Yelang clanspeople living here were swimming in wealth and wielded immense power.
After springing the crossbow trap, Long Li’s route grew even more tortuous, weaving through narrow gaps in the thick underbrush. By the end of it, Gu Xianwang and Ye Chan’s arms were covered in fine scratches.
At first, Gu Xianwang didn’t notice. But then that familiar cold fragrance began to drift through the air. From somewhere deep in the fog came a low, ominous buzzing, and she suddenly realized that something had been drawn to her.
Right there in the fog.
